FIG. 1 is a schematic diagram of a Policy and Charging Control (PCC) architecture. FIG. 1 shows a PCC architecture defined by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP).
A Policy and Charging Rules Function (PCRF) is in charge of specifying Quality of Service (QoS) and charging policy for network resource utilization of a service. The PCRF may need to set a control policy in combination with service information received from an Application Function (AF), subscription information received from a Subscription Profile Repository (SPR), a policy configured by an operating company and the like. The PCRF may transmit control policy setting for the service to a Policy and Charging Enforcement Function (PCEF) or a Bearer Binding and Event Report Function (BBERF). Meanwhile, the PCRF may subscribe to a bearer layer related event from the PCEF and/or the BBERF, so as to timely sense the event occurring in a bearer layer and accordingly change the control policy. In addition, the PCEF may enforce an ADC function according to a PCC rule, and a Traffic Detection Function (TDF) may enforce an ADC function according to ADC rule transmitted by the PCRF. The application detection function of the PCEF and the TDF may enable a bearer network to sense application layer related information, for example, an application type and data stream description information, of data which is being transmitted in the bearer network under the condition that no AF provides service information. The PCRF may set corresponding policies for these applications according to application information and a related network policy, thereby effectively performing differentiated QoS control and guarantee.
At present, the PCEF and the TDF usually adopt a preconfigured algorithm (for example, Deeply Packet Inspection (DPI), a heuristic algorithm), feature base and the like to detect a data packet in the bearer network. However, preconfiguring a feature base on the PCEF and the TDF may have the following problems.
Since service (for example, an Internet service) development of a third-party application is very flexible and high in timeliness, a method of preconfiguring a feature base on a PCEF and a TDF is long in updating period, and may not meet a rapid development requirement of the third-party application.
When the operating company and the third-party application cooperate for service development, hundreds of thousands and even millions of services may be operated on line at the same time. Under such a condition, the operating company may need to correspondingly acquire millions of application feature fields. Storage spaces of the PCEF and the TDF are limited, so that it may be impossible to store a million-level application feature base.